Secrets
by kaitco
Summary: When tragedy strikes, Olivia is left to make a difficult decision.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Meh…I'll be the first to admit that this is not the best thing I've ever written, but it's an idea that's been swirling in my mind for the last year and now, it's finally developed into a real story. The setup for this scenario is a little gimmicky, but hopefully the rest of the story will work well. Cheers!

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**Secrets**

_Chapter One_

"I still can't believe you won it."

"Believe it."

"Nobody really wins it."

"Apparently _some_body does."

"It's not fair. I used to put in for it every year and just stopped this year for the first time."

"Too bad…so sad…I still won."

Olivia could hear Elliot's locker door close softly and sensed that he was smiling at her as she sat straddling the bench that ran parallel to the lockers. Her gaze, however, remained fixed on the congratulatory paperwork in her hands to keep from giving him the satisfaction of knowing how flustered she became when he changed shirts in front of her.

The in-house courier, Laura, had delivered an envelope to the floor that evening and had said it was urgent for Elliot, but she could not find him. Olivia, knowing that Elliot was coming to the end of his evening workout in the gym, went straight to the lockers closest to the SVU crib hoping to catch him before he left for the night.

As she had expected, he was still glistening from the weight room when she stepped into the small room. He had had a small towel draped across his shoulders, but had used the neck of his muscle shirt to wipe a bead of sweat from the tip of nose instead.

"Did we get Byroms' confession to Grayleck yet?" he had asked.

She had nodded and they continued to chat about Ian Byroms who had been a menacing presence for young women on the Hudson University campus for the previous two months, but had finally confessed to his crimes earlier that same afternoon in their interrogation room.

Their conversation had turned into a light banter when Olivia began to suggestively recount how quickly Byroms confession came after she had stepped out of the interrogation room to take an urgent phone call from a victim who had only said it was urgent because she just wanted to get Olivia on the phone and talk to "the only person who really understood" for a few minutes.

Elliot had winked at her following the suggestion that he might have had a hand in Byroms rapid confession in her absence. "All in a day's work." It was only then that he inquired about the brown inter-office envelope in her hand; the urgent letter had been forgotten the moment Elliot's toned body had come into view.

He had asked her to read the letter to him while he changed his shirt and, determined not to stare at him, Olivia put a false indignation at Elliot's prize as she focused on the letter.

"A trip for two…seven days and six nights in Hawaii," she said, shaking her head at the letter in her hand. "You know, I've entered that contest every year since the day I _joined_ the FOP."

"And to think I entered on the only Lodge 2-10 meeting I've ever gone to."

"You're one lucky bastard, Elliot. I'll say that."

He laughed as he took the envelope from her, now fully dressed. "Not that lucky. Kathy and I probably won't be able to go."

"Why not? You have time coming up and the trip isn't for a few weeks."

"Yeah," he sighed. He looked at the paperwork in his hand and nodded for her to follow him back into the squad room. "I'm not worried about the time. It's the same problem that always comes up whenever Kath and I try to plan a vacation for just the two of us."

Olivia stopped in her tracks as her eyebrows came together. "When was the last time you and Kathy took a vacation with just the two of you?"

"My point exactly. They've always been good kids, but anytime we even breathed the word 'babysitter,' they argue about it to the point where Kathy and I have stopped trying to take any time for just us."

"Well, the twins are older now. I'm sure they could take care of themselves for a little while."

His lips pulled into a smirk as he continued down the corridor, shaking his head.

"Seriously, Elliot," Olivia said when she caught up to him. "You're going to let a free vacation go to waste just like that?"

"It's not just like that. There's no way we're gonna leave them to…to throw a house party every night of the week or worse while we're gone."

Olivia watched him fall into the chair at his desk in a huff. "You don't honestly think Dickie and Lizzie would start throwing parties at the house. I mean, they may be kids, but I'm sure they know they'd get caught before the music even had a chance to get too loud."

"I wouldn't expect Dickie and Lizzie to do that, but _Dick_ and _Elizabeth_, both fifteen going on thirty…Who knows? Besides, they've already seen how to get it done from Kathleen and Maureen's _shining_ examples."

"I wouldn't call a few kids hanging out in your backyard when Kathy had to work late a party, Elliot."

"It wasn't the kids. It was the empty bottles littering my lawn. You out of here, John?"

Munch appeared in the squad room wearing his trench coat and a sarcastic expression that betrayed the apparent anger in his stride.

"Did I hear right?" he asked. "You won the Hawaii trip this year?"

Elliot sighed. "I just found out about it a couple minutes ago."

"You don't even go to the FOP meetings."

"I went to the one before last and figured 'What the hell?' How'd you find out about it so fast?"

"I have my sources." Munch shook his head. "Well, you're one lucky bastard, Stabler."

Olivia grinned from her side of the desk pair. "See? Told ya."

Elliot laughed. "It doesn't matter. I still have to run it by the wife and figure out what to do with the kids for a week before it's even a possibility."

"Well, if you can't go…" Munch took a forward step. "There's no point in letting free trip go to waste."

"I'm sure I could find a way to make the tickets pay off some favors I owe a couple people. Besides, what were you planning to do if you'd won?"

"Just take some time to lie out on the beach and let my skin burn for a little while before taking some nice relaxing swims in the ocean while I dodge the sharks and the sting rays. You know. Normal vacation things."

"And, who were you going to take?" Elliot asked.

Munch stared at Elliot for a moment and then glanced at Olivia. "Liv?"

"A free trip to paradise for a week?" Olivia said, shrugging. "I'd go with Satan himself."

"Close enough," Elliot snickered.

Munch kicked the leg of Elliot's chair. "I only joined the lodge so I could enter that and you win it…unbelievable."

"It was all a conspiracy, John," Elliot said. "I've got an in with the people who do the drawing and I've been slipping them all twenty bucks a year to make sure they never draw your name."

"Yeah, well, I hope you get second-degree burns from the sun and a tidal wave knocks out everything the second your plane lands."

"Aw, now you're just being spiteful," Olivia said.

"Spiteful? Me? No, spiteful would be wishing for _third_-degree burns and for the tidal wave to hit while the plane was still in the air."

Elliot flung the brown envelope at Munch who dodged it easily and waved goodnight to them.

The quiet in the squad room suddenly seemed very loud and Olivia cleared her throat as she caught herself staring at Elliot.

"So, seriously," she said. "What's the game plan for you and Kathy because I _know_ you're not going to give up that trip on whim?"

He leaned in his chair and balanced the small stack of paper across his chest. "The problem's not really the twins. I mean I trust my neighbors enough to keep an eye on the house for a week while we'd be gone. I just don't trust the twins with Eli."

"Well, don't they take care of the baby every now and then anyways?"

"Yeah, two hours there. Three hours there. Never a seven full days by themselves."

"I suppose even a _hip_ babysitter is out of the question."

"It would take a bribe to make the twins even hear us out. A big one. Not to mention just _finding_ someone who could take all three for a week.

"All-day daycare and two teenagers? Good luck with that."

"Nah. Eli's at daycare for most of the day. But, there's no way I'm comfortable with leaving him with the twins. They're just not ready."

"I thought Maureen was your default babysitter for Eli though."

"Not so much lately. She's been putting in heavy hours at the law library and only picks him up from daycare as a favor to me and Kath once in a while." Leaning the chair back to its original position, Elliot tossed the paperwork on his desk and sighed. "Always one more thing to stress about."

Olivia went silent and continued to stare at the pencil holder on Elliot's desk, though her eyes were barely focused. Her thoughts whirled like a cloudy haze over her eyes to the point that she nearly jumped out of her chair when Elliot spoke again.

"Liv?" he said. "What's on your mind?"

"Well, just…no, it's nothing."

"No, seriously. What's up? You look like something's bothering you."

Olivia pursed her lips and glanced at him once, but let her line of sight fall onto the mess of paperwork across her own desk.

"Well," she began. "I could…I mean…No, never mind."

"What?"

"Well…I doubt I'd be able to handle all three, but I could probably look after Eli for a week…if you couldn't find anyone else."

"You'd watch Eli for a week while Kathy and I went to Hawaii?"

"Yeah…yes. I could watch him. I mean, obviously he'd still have to be at his daycare during the day, but I could leave here early…around seven or so and then get him afterward."

Elliot sighed. "I couldn't ask you to do that, Liv."

"You're not asking. I'm offering."

"I don't want to disrupt your life like that."

"Ooh. Disrupt my _great_, _big_ social life."

"I'm serious, Liv. Eli can be a handful."

"I can take care of him for week, Elliot. And, I can even drop by the house and make sure Dickie…Dick and Elizabeth aren't burning down the house. That way, they get to believe they're slightly independent and the baby still gets watched at night."

He sighed again. "I'll run it by Kathy, but I don't want to inconvenience you."

"You wouldn't be doing that and I'd really like to just have him for a little while. The only times I get to see him are for random drive-bys if I drop you off at night. It would be nice."

"Can your place even be remotely baby-proofed?"

"Sure," Olivia said, leaning in her own chair. "Well…all except for that twenty-inch sword I've got lying across the floor in case of emergency…and then all those keys I've got stashed near all my electrical outlets for safe keeping and the nails and thumbtacks I just leave scattered across the floor and the edges of my end tables I've filed down to nice points so sharp they slice my shins when I walk by them _and_ the-"

"All right, all right. I got it."

"Honestly, Elliot," she said, smiling. "I'd love to watch him for a week."

Elliot stared at her for a long time before a grin pulled across his face. "I'll talk to Kathy about it and we'll get back to you, but at this point you'd be our _last_ resort if we couldn't think of anything else and were out of options."

"As long as Aunt Liv knows her place…"


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: I know it does not seem like it, but _swear_ I'm going somewhere with this story. It starts to come together in Chapter 3.

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Secrets

Chapter 2

Olivia's heart fluttered as she took a deep breath and let her eyes sweep across her living room for what could have been the fifteenth time that morning.

Elliot had just called her from the first floor of her building and, while she knew she had taken every necessary step to make her apartment child-appropriate for a week, her hands still shook as she waited for Elliot and Kathy to take the elevator up to her floor.

It was not that she had had little experience with children or toddlers; there was enough time spent with relatives, friends and on the job in general for her to be well-prepared for any child. Eli Stabler, however, felt like a Fabergé egg coming through her apartment; everything had to be perfect for such a precious little thing.

She crossed the living room once more, ensuring that the space she had designated for Eli's playpen was large enough, surveyed her bedroom, confirming again that she had moved her bed against the wall to make room from Eli's separate crib, and then backtracked to the living room to, again, convince herself that everything in the apartment was set.

Blankets had been arranged to cover every edge she thought could be remotely sharp, the cords for her blinds were tied towards the tops of the windows, every bare electrical outlet was plugged and her lower cabinets were all locked with baby locks.

Olivia nodded to herself, satisfied that the apartment seemed to meet her standards, and tensed as she heard a knock at her door.

"Hey!" Kathy said brightly as she stood in the doorway holding Eli.

Elliot nodded silently as he stepped through the door carrying Eli's playpen. Olivia pointed towards the spot that had been previously measured and watched bemusedly as Elliot began a quick scan of her apartment before setting up the playpen.

"You remember Auntie Olivia, right Eli?" Kathy said as she lifted her son.

Eli stared at Olivia apprehensively for a moment and then leaned back into his mother.

"You remember me, right?" Olivia said in a soothing voice, outstretching her arms. "I fed you apple sauce on Christmas Eve and you threw it back up on my shirt…"

Eli giggled and then reached out to be held by her.

"Oh, yeah," Olivia said as she held him. "You remember…"

Kathy patted Eli's hair as he hugged Olivia. "Okay…so, first things first. In the bag that Elliot's going to bring on his _second_ trip…" She paused to glance at Elliot who was half-tangled with the playpen on the floor. "…will be all the numbers we can think of that you might need. I've got Eli's pediatrician, our general family doctor, our neighbors on both sides and Maureen's cell number. I doubt you'll need them, but I also added my mother's number and my sister's number on the list, too."

"C'mon Kath," Elliot said, continuing his wrestle with the playpen. "She's a cop, not a twelve-year-old."

She rolled her eyes and continued. "We've already made arrangements with the daycare. They'll only need an ID and your signature to pick him up. They officially close at seven. If you're there at even 7:01, they'll charge us a ton of fees, so if you don't think you'll make by then…and judging from the number of times Elliot's said he could make it by seven and didn't…just give Maureen a call and she can get him before they close."

Olivia made a mental list as she switched a fidgeting Eli to her left hip.

"He's an incredibly fussy eater," Kathy said, never removing her eyes from Eli as Olivia moved him. "Half the time he likes spitting anything back out just to see the face you'll make when he does, but he's usually pretty good when you use his tiger spoon. We brought the tiger spoon right, right Elliot?"

Elliot's face scrunched as he looked up and pinched a finger between the bottom of the playpen and floor. "Yeah...it's in the car. I'll be down to get it in just a sec."

Kathy nodded. "Good. So, if it seems like you're getting more food on his shirt than in his mouth because he keeps spitting it back out, just go for the tiger spoon and he'll eat."

"You have to _'Grr' _when you do it though," Elliot called from the floor.

"It helps," Kathy said, chuckling, "but as soon as he sees it, he'll be ready to eat."

"What's so special about the tiger spoon?" Olivia asked as she untangled Eli's hand from her earring that had caught his attention.

"No idea," Kathy shrugging. "But, Maureen was the same way. She wouldn't eat unless we used this stupid spoon with a unicorn on it."

Elliot gave a sad groan behind them as he temporarily gave up on the playpen and then headed for the door. He glanced at Olivia as he pointed to her keys on their hook next to her door. She nodded and he quickly left the apartment with her keys.

"When he comes back," Kathy said, rubbing at a small spot on Eli's face, "I'll take out his Paddington for you. Eli just loves the little bear to death and he gets very fussy if it's not in the crib with him when he sleeps. It took us about a month to really figure out the bear was the trick to getting him to go to sleep..."

Kathy continued to prattle about the educational toys she had been trying to get Eli to use as Elliot made two more trips from their car and back to the apartment, carrying diaper bags, clothes and baby food. He moved about the apartment quickly and decisively, putting things into her fridge and in her cabinets as if he knew precisely where everything was supposed to go.

"He doesn't have any allergies that we know of," Kathy said, "but if something happens just let us know when we get back. Also…" Kathy paused as she pulled a camera out of her purse and gave it to Olivia. "He's been taking some steps here or there and I think he might start talking a little any day now. If you see him doing anything…special, this takes pictures and video."

"Sounds good," Olivia said.

"Okay, all set," Elliot said with a triumphant grunt as he lifted himself from the floor. "The playpen is set up as well as the crib in your room. His food is in your cabinets, spoons in the drawers, including the tiger spoon…I put his blankets, the diaper bags and the bags with his clothes and toys on your bed since I'm not sure where you wanted to put those. Everything else…the stroller, carriers and whatever I put next to your closet."

Olivia shifted Eli and bounced him on her hip. "We'll be fine."

Elliot reached for Eli who started fussing as he pulled him away from Olivia.

"Oh hush," Elliot said as he held him. "Daddy just made three trips carrying all your stuff up here."

Eli simply giggled and Elliot passed him to Kathy who gave him a big hug and a kiss on the cheek before giving him back to Olivia."

"Thank you so much for doing this Olivia," Kathy said, looking like she was going to hug her as well. "We really can't thank you enough."

"My pleasure."

Kathy smiled at Eli as he clutched Olivia and she rubs his head. "Bye, my baby boy."

"Eli, can you wave 'goodbye?'" Olivia motioned for Eli to wave and he copied the motion of opening and closing his hand, but backwards, essentially waving at himself.

"We'll work on that," Olivia laughed. "Have fun. And, don't come back sunburned because I don't want to hear any whining."

Kathy turned to leave the apartment, but Elliot stopped her. "Did you tell her about the thing about the playpen?"

"Oh! I nearly forgot," Kathy said and took a step towards Olivia. "He's been doing this thing lately since he's been standing. He just pulls himself up with the sides of the playpen and…kind of tries to get out of it. It's usually not a big deal since he really can't get over the edge."

"Except the time when he _did_," Elliot mumbled.

Kathy turned and glared at him. "Don't start with that now. Okay? Before I'd gone outside, he was asleep and the carpet broke his fall…" She turned her attention back to Olivia and tried to smile again. "I don't think you'll have a problem with him doing that since he'll probably be worn out from daycare by the time you get him, but just a little F.Y.I. He _may_ try to climb out of the playpen. He uses that bar that runs across the mesh and a couple of his toys and just kind of pulls himself up. He's gotten out a couple times and even hit his head when he fell once, but he's always been okay. If he looks like he might be feisty enough to keep trying it, just pop in the Blues Clues DVD and he'll be calm for close to an hour."

Olivia made another mental note as Kathy and Elliot said their goodbyes again and set Eli on the floor in a standing position. He wobbled for a moment and then wrapped his small arms around Olivia's leg to steady himself.

She smiled and sighed. _Well, now what?_

As she bent to pick him up and go into the kitchen, she heard a knock at her door.

"Who is it?"

"It's me again," Elliot's voice called from behind her door.

She answered it a moment later with Eli in her arms again. "Hey."

Elliot pulled a small envelope out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Olivia.

"What's this?" she asked.

"It's just…I know you said you volunteered for this, but…"

Olivia frowned slightly at his pause and opened the envelope with one hand. "Elliot…there's at least three hundred dollars here. I can't take this."

"You're not taking it. We're giving it to you. If he wants something or you need to go out and buy anything for him….or, if you just want to go splurge on some Manolo Blahniks, it'll be on us."

She handed the envelope back to him and shook her head. "I can't take your money. You two use it down there."

"No. It's yours."

Olivia tried to shove the envelope back to him and close the door, but he grabbed and stuffed it down her shirt before she could get the door closed. Eli laughed and squirmed in her arms.

"Yeah, you like when your daddy gets the best of Aunt Liv, don't you?" Eli laughed again. "We'll see who gets the last word when he gets a little _surprise_ from Aunt Liv in his locker."

She walked into her bedroom with him and put him in the crib as she looked over the things Elliot had laid on her bed.

"Hmm…," she said aloud. "Looks like your mom packed you enough clothes to last for a month. I think _she_ thinks Aunt Liv is going to be changing your outfit every other hour while you're here."

She heard Eli shift behind her and watched as he pulled himself up to a stand, but then lost his balance when he noticed her watching and fell backwards on his bottom with a plop.

"Aunt Liv's watching you," she said and she winked at him; Eli erupted into a fit of giggles at her wink.

Olivia went through the various bags discovering which bag held what while Eli scratched around in the crib behind her, occasionally singing to himself as he played.

An hour later, as she tried to get Eli to eat a small lunch, she saw the significance of Eli having a month's worth of clothes.

Partially mashed carrots and green beans were smeared in several lumps on the high chair, on the floor, across the table and on Olivia's clothes. While she was certain that between Eli trying to feed himself with his hands and her attempts at getting spoonfuls of food into his mouth, Eli had managed to eat _some_ food, Olivia was still skeptical of how much he actually got to eat from the sheer amount of food on his clothes, all over his skin and intertwined in almost all the curls on his head.

"I think," Olivia said, as she gathered another spoonful of carrots, "your mom and dad neglected to tell Aunt Liv a few things about actually getting the food to stay in your mouth even with the oh-so-special _tiger _spoon."

Eli jabbered to himself, effectively ignoring her attempts with the spoon, and squeezed the glob of food that he had amassed on the high chair table.

"Eli," she said, grabbing his attention. "Can you go like this?"

He stared at her for a minute as she opened her mouth wide and then mimicked the expression.

Olivia took the moment and popped the spoon into his mouth. "Mmm...good right?"

Eli actually shook his head at her, crinkled his nose and let the carrots spray out of his mouth, showering the chair and Olivia's shirt, again.

She sighed, but could not help smiling at him. "You know if Aunt Liv didn't think you were so darn cute, she'd be calling your parents _right_ now." Eli giggled and dove his hand back into his food pile.

Once she had resigned to give him an early bath to get all the food out of his hair, Olivia tried to clean off herself as best she could while continually leaning out of her bathroom to watch Eli in the playpen. As she got the last bits of green beans off her neck, she found herself completely surprised to see how quickly Eli could go from sitting and playing quietly with his bear to rattling the sides of the playpen and fussing slightly.

"I think it's time for nap," she said as she lifted him and walked to the crib in her bedroom.

She set him in the low-standing crib, but he immediately began crying, raising up his arms as if wanting to be held. After several attempts at soothing him with her voice, Olivia gave up and walked around the apartment holding him and rubbing his back, trying to make him as sleepy as possible. Just when she thought she had him tired enough, he shifted in her arms and threw up enough on himself and her shoulder to warrant another bath and another walk around the apartment; it took another round of cleaning and walking before he had stopped throwing up and was ready to sleep.

After she cleaned up the orange and green mess off the high chair and her floors, Olivia jumped in the shower, finding more mashed carrots and green beans in places she never thought possible, and was half way finished drying her hair when she heard a sound coming from her bedroom, almost as if someone was coughing.

Olivia walked into the bedroom and stopped short as she found Eli huffing as he tried to get his leg over the side of the crib. Mesmerized, she watched him a moment more before jumping into the room to catch him before he got his leg over the side.

Her heart raced as she held him, though she was not sure if it was the fact that he could climb, but that Eli, at nine months old, had the presence of mind to push his blanket into the corner of the crib and stand on it and his bear to get him high enough to get up and over the crib's bars.

"No, no, no," Olivia said softly as she held him. "Aunt Liv doesn't want you to fall, Eli. If you fell and hit your head on Aunt Liv's hardwood floors, your daddy would have a fit and take her out with his bare hands."

He stared at her for a minute and she wondered vaguely if he had understood what she said, but she dismissed the thought a minute later when he turned his attention to her still damp hair.

Olivia put him on the floor for a moment, but then snatched him back up again when she remembered the raised floor staple in her bedroom on which she had been sporadically stepping and about which she had been continually nagging her landlord for the past decade.

She finished drying her hair in her bedroom, amused by the fact that Eli did not attempt any climbing acrobatics while she was watching him, and decided to take Eli to the park for the rest of the afternoon.

Feeling slightly awkward with a diaper bag draped across her shoulder, Olivia pushed Eli in his stroller as he spoke in a language only he could understand and pointed at the various things he saw in Central Park. All the families crowded around the playgrounds made her heart ache and made her wonder about her real reasons for agreeing to baby-sit Eli.

Months earlier, Michelle at the Administration of Children's Services had sat with Olivia and earnestly explained that she felt Olivia lacked the discipline and the drive to be a mother. Olivia had gawked at her, immediately retorting that she had more discipline and drive than anyone she knew, but when Michelle calmly suggested that Olivia did not seem ready to put aside her time consuming and often dangerous career path to make a child number one in her life, Olivia lowered her tone.

In the months that followed, Olivia had tried to find ways to prove to herself that Michelle and ACS were wrong and when opportunity knocked, she jumped for it.

The case for Ian Byroms lay waiting to be scrutinized in case of errors, but there she was taking Eli to the park just because she wanted to take him. All her efforts notwithstanding, Michelle had made another point and Olivia had not readied response for it.

"You were raised by a single parent yourself, Olivia," Michelle had said. "Wouldn't you think a child could be better raised by two parents?"

Outside of the fabulously wealthy, Olivia had rarely heard of ACS giving children to unmarried women, especially when said women held jobs that put them directly into the line of fire and the lack of a maternal instinct seemed to echo off them as they entered the room.

_I'll have to get married_, she thought. _Even if he's not _the one_, I'll have to get married if I ever want one of my own._

After pushing Eli around the park for close to twenty minutes, she saw an open baby swing on the playground and headed straight for it.

"How about a little time on the swings, Eli?" Olivia said as she took Eli from the stroller.

She was about to lift Eli into the swing when a flush-faced woman with too much mascara and bushy hair stormed towards her.

"Hey!" the woman yelled. "What d'you think you're doing?"

"I'm sorry…?" Olivia said, eyebrows furrowed and not liking the woman's tone or body language as she approached.

"We've been waiting for that swing." She pointed at the red-faced, fussing two-year-old she had in a child leash.

Olivia held Eli tighter. "I…I didn't know there was a line."

"There isn't, but I was saving it for Mikey once he got off the tube slides."

"Oh," Olivia said, putting Eli in the swing. "Well, we got here first and I'm sure he'll get tired soon enough."

Olivia reached around to begin pushing Eli, but the woman pushed her shoulder and stepped closer.

"Who do you think you are?" she yelled. "I was saving that swing for my kid!"

Stopping the swing and taking Eli in arms to keep herself from doing anything too rash, Olivia reached in her pocket and pulled out her badge. The woman's eyes went wide and she took a step backward.

"Look," Olivia said. "I'm sorry that you thought you were _saving_ this swing, but there's a million people out here, no one was using this one and just wanted to push my godson on a swing for a little while. Now, I'm trying to be nice, but if you touch me again, I'll be forced to ruin _both_ of our Saturdays over something really insignificant."

"C'mon Mikey," the woman said after a tense silence. "Let's go see if your Uncle Colin can meet us a little later."

She glared at Olivia and stormed away in huff, nearly dragging her child who was in the midst of having a temper tantrum.

"See that, Eli?" Olivia said as she pushed him. "That's what happens when you grow up thinking the world owes you something. Don't grow up to be like that."

Eli babbled in his baby-speak and pointed in the direction of the woman and her screaming toddler.

"That's right, Eli. An example of how you _don't_ want to be."

Olivia pushed a laughing Eli for a little when he started to fuss in the swing and she finally took him home. When she tried to change him, she figured she surprised him by taking off his diaper too quickly because he shivered once and then wet the front of her shirt.

After another bath, and a shower for herself, Olivia put Eli in some blue sleepers and allowed the _Blues Clues_ DVD to play in the background as she sat next to him and help him colour in a colouring book on her coffee table. She had bought the book on her last-minute dash to the market down the street to make sure she had everything she might need to make Eli comfortable. In the end, she was glad she had bought it as he took to colouring like a much older child would have.

He simply stared looked at the large crayons at first, trying to munch on the red and then just banging the blue on the table until Olivia showed him he could make marks on paper. She sat watching him make little marks across the paper until he seemed more determined to draw on her table than in the book and then she scooped him up to read _Where the Wild Things Are_.

Eli patted each page as she read and giggled as she showed him scene after scene of "Max" having a "wild rumpus" with the other wild things. By the time she had finished reading to him and showing him all the pictures, Eli was rubbing his eyes and was becoming very still in her lap.

When Olivia finally laid Eli to sleep, she fell across her sofa with a flop, feeling as if she could sleep for the next hundred years. One day of taking care of a baby had exhausted her and she wondered how people twins or other multiples managed to do it.

Michelle's voice seemed to ring her head as she considered the idea of having to take care of a child all by herself all the time. The idea that single mothers, and even her own mother, managed everyday to do what had exhausted her after only half a day seemed almost laughable.

She pulled herself from the couch and checked on Eli before crawling into her own bed with a sigh. Kathy and Elliot were presumably still flying towards the tropics and, though she felt incredibly tired taking care of him, Olivia knew she was going to miss Eli as soon as his parents arrived to get him the following week.

Allowing her eyelids to close, Olivia decided she would just cherish the time she could spend with him and tried to sleep, waking once every few hours as she heard Eli rustling in his crib near the foot of her bed.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Okay, I fibbed a little; Chapter 3 is not the riveting piece of fiction I was promising. Sorry! Sometimes stories start to take on a life of their own and become something a bit larger than what I had originally intended. I have, however, got most of the remaining story written, so the updates should be coming a lot quicker. I also take a lot of artistic liberties with this chapter in order to give the effect that I want. I know some things are not "normal" procedure, but I try make them at least _sound_ correct.

* * *

Secrets

Chapter Three

Olivia turned over in her bed as the sunshine streaming through the blinds beckoned her eyes to open. Sunday mornings were the only time throughout the week when she allowed herself an extra hour of sleep before she started her day. A nagging small voice in the back of her mind echoed something about dragging herself to a church service, but she ignored it and snuggled deeper against her pillow.

After a few more minutes of squeezing out the sunlight, Olivia slowly opened her eyes with the strange sensation that someone was staring at her. When her eyes finally fluttered open, she saw a pair of big blue eyes staring at her curiously from right beside her bed. It took her brain several seconds to recognize that the eyes belonged to Eli and several more seconds to realize that he was much closer to her bed than he should have been.

"Holy shit!" she yelled as she jumped out of the bed.

Eli stared up at her as he stood next to the bed holding his Paddington and smiled as Olivia shook on her feet. She picked him up and kept looking all over him to make sure he had not hurt himself and then held him tightly as her heart rate slowed.

When she saw him about to escape from his crib the previous day, she imagined it was a rare occurrence, as Kathy had suggested, but as she held a squirming Eli, her head spun with frantic of thoughts of what could have happened to him in the time he had made it over his crib to the time he stood standing next to her bed.

_Oh my God! He could have fallen,_ she thought, _Oh God! What if I didn't wake up? He could've hit his head on something or drowned in the toilet or anything._

Eli shifted and fussed in her arms and she checked his head and down his sleeper again just to reassure herself that he was fine.

After changing him, receiving only a minor spraying this time, and putting him in the playpen with a few extra blankets to keep him distracted, Olivia cleaned up herself up a little and made some oatmeal for Eli.

The oatmeal was eaten in the same fashion as his other meals and, after an hour, Eli was in need of a wipe down and a new outfit.

"We're just gonna hang out today, okay?" she said to Eli as she carried him into the living room. "Aunt Liv doesn't really feel like leaving the apartment if she can help it. Sundays are best spent in pajamas."

Eli jabbered to himself once she set him on his feet and, over a series of steps that alternated between unsteady and forceful, he walked towards the coffee table to bang his hands on it.

"What Eli? Do you want to colour some more or are you just making noise?" He shrieked as he laughed and banged the table again. "Okay…a little of both…"

After popping in a new Blues Clues DVD and creating a layer of printer paper over her coffee table, Olivia arranged herself on the floor next to Eli to review her notes and paperwork from her cases the previous week as he drew wayward marks over anything that seemed capable of holding crayon colour.

When the constant recounting of assault after assault seemed to wear on her quicker than normal, Olivia ran a hand over Eli's curls and pulled him closer as she grabbed one of the large crayons he had scattered over the table.

"Let's draw your name," she said and wrapped her hand around his tiny grip. "Eee…Ehl…Aye…Yeah, fun right?"

He tried to put the crayon back in her hand and she helped him draw his name again, amazed at how focused he seemed while she did it.

After several guided drawings, Eli tried to repeat the motions, but only managed to make several zigzagged lines as he babbled to himself. The expression on his face as he kept making his "mark" seemed so serious and comical at the same time that Olivia found the camera Kathy had given her and took just a few pictures that she figured his parents would enjoy.

Olivia watched him colour for a while longer until she thought he seemed hungry, but instead of just placing him in the high chair and attempting to feed him, she changed into a tank top and took him down to just his diaper to avoid having food smeared over every inch of their clothes.

"Oh, yeah," she said as Eli speared spaghetti sauce across the high chair ten minutes later. He was covered in spaghetti from head to toe, but at least there was not a new pile of food-laden clothes waiting to be washed.

"Yep," Olivia said. "We're just a trailer and a pair of daisy dukes away from being totally poor white trash."

Eli just shrieked and banged his hands on the high chair table, splattering spaghetti sauce in every direction.

Once she gave Eli a bath and put him down for a nap, Olivia pulled Ian Byroms' case again, giving the documents a harsh glare as she scrutinized them.

She had noticed previously that the name Byroms had an unsettling familiarity to it and it was not until she studied his case file that she remembered from where she had seen his name. Almost a decade earlier, a then twelve-year-old Ian Byroms had sat in her very precinct after allegations had been made that he had been inappropriate with one of the girls in his gym class. Even though the young girl had recanted her story once in the squad room, Olivia had not believed Byrom's assertion that "they were just playing around" and, years later, the idea that she could have stopped a predator before he had really got started made her nauseated.

Sighing, she left her desk and walked towards the window to watch the sky beginning to turn to orange. Throughout her time in the SVU, Elliot's hatred for rapists and child molesters had always seemed to trump her own, but as she listened to Eli shift in the next room, she finally saw what drove Elliot's point of view.

They were not even hers, but she loved Elliot's children simply because they were his and the idea that some monster was lurking in their schools, on college campuses or simply on the streets pained her as much as she knew it pained Elliot. It was a pain she had never before experienced, but in the moment she connected the twenty-two year old Ian Byroms with his baby-faced visage that still haunted her memory, Olivia understood why Elliot hated every perp who crossed their paths more than most SVU detectives.

The orange in the sky became interlaced with purple and, just as she realized that she had probably let Eli sleep for too long, something moved sharply from the corner of her eye.

Olivia crossed her living room and bedroom in four steps to catch Eli just as he was about to get his other leg over the crib.

He fussed and squirmed in her arms, but she could only marvel over the fact that he could even think to stack all three stuff animals _and_ his blanket in the corner to aid his jump over the crib's edge.

"You know," she said as she settled him on her hip, "Aunt Liv thinks you're really quite bright. Wise beyond your nine months on this planet."

Eli continued to fidget and shift until she let him walk around the apartment. She moved her sofa, coffee table and desk towards one another and made a pen in which Eli could move about, using her closed bedroom door as a fourth wall. She watched him toddle around the space, clearly enjoying his newfound freedom, and had to take a wide step around her coffee table to catch her phone before it stopped ringing.

"Benson."

Liv! It's Elliot!"

"Hey! How's Hawaii?"

"Beautiful, but hot as hell. I've got on SPF 60 and I'm _still_ sunburned!"

Elliot proceeded to tell her about how the hotel did not have a reservation on record for them and how he had nearly had an argument with a gentleman at the car rental counter over a reneged upgrade agreement, but that overall, he and Kathy were enjoying themselves.

Olivia joked about having to result to feeding Eli in just his diaper to avoid the mess and about his rampant escapism. Elliot suggested she put Eli in the playpen with an extra blanket to sleep and then Kathy came on the phone asking that Olivia put the phone near Eli so he could hear her voice. By the time she had them off the phone, Olivia was drained again and Eli was fussing as he rubbed his eyes.

In a last effort to keep from having to move even more furniture that day while still soaking wet from giving him a bath, she put Eli into his crib and watched from the doorway as he lay still for a few minutes. He then slowly maneuvered to a stand, placed his blanket and his bear on top of two other stuffed animals in the corner of the crib and began to pull himself up and over the edge of the crib.

Sighing, Olivia took Eli from the crib to his playpen, pushed the crib into the living room, switched him back to the crib and, with Eli now watching her intently, moved the surprisingly heavy playpen across the floor and into her bedroom. She had got it halfway through the doorframe when the playpen would no longer budge. After several hard heaves and a giggle from Eli, Olivia realized that a leg of the playpen had stuck on the raised floor staple and, feeling quite sheepish, she managed to get the playpen situated in her bedroom.

She watched him sleep for five full minutes before falling into her bed and hoping that she would have the energy for him when she picked him up from daycare the following evening.

The alarm clock ripped her from sleep an hour earlier than usual so that she would have time to get Eli and his things ready for daycare. Thankfully, he was still asleep and there were no indications that he been trying to escape from the playpen.

She showered quickly and found Eli preparing to escape as she was trying to dry her hair. She took the dryer in her bedroom again where they made a game out of Eli trying to get out of crib and Olivia gently nudging Eli back into it with her leg; he got to laugh, she got to dry her hair. With so many opportunities to dress and re-dress him over the weekend, Olivia got Eli dressed with ease and they were out the door a few minutes after six in the morning.

Eli was fussing harder than she had ever seen him fuss once the cab rounded the corner to his daycare center and by the time she was attempting to sign him in with the smiling woman at the center's front desk, he was in a full, red-faced scream.

While she wanted to simply pull him off of her, Eli only cried louder each time she would start to pull or when the assistant, Gina, started to reach for him.

It took another ten minutes of walking him around the hallway and rubbing his back to get him calm enough to be held by Gina and, even then, he was still crying as Olivia backed away from him.

"I'll be back later," she said, trying to soothe him with her voice. "I promise. I'll be right back here to get you later."

Cragen was waiting for her with a case file in hand the moment she stepped off the elevator at the precinct twenty minutes later and took a deep breath before delivering the news he had been waiting to give since it had come to him.

"Just got a call from a frantic father saying his five-year-old son Tristan Matterson wandered away from the preschool his mother runs. The father figured the boy had run away when he showed at his office saying he wanted to play. Now, the father's calling us and any connections he's got as well as his attorney trying to get the mother's school shut down. We already know it's an acrimonious divorce with a big custody battle that's just getting heated, but now the father's saying that Tristan ran away from the school because someone there was hurting him. We're still not sure how Tristan got across the park all by himself since his mother's school is on Central Park West and his father's office on 5th, but by the end of the phone call the father was claiming that someone must have simply grabbed Tristan and then left him on 5th where he just found his way back his dad's office. Right now, I'd like to get the boy checked out so we can see if there are any signs of trauma and talk to both parents to get the full story." Cragen paused to take a breath. "Sorry. I take it your weekend with Stabler's kid went well?"

"Things with Eli went fine and I'm on Tristan as soon as I down the rest of this coffee."

To her word, as soon as Olivia had set down her previous cases and finished her coffee, she was back in the elevator to the ground floor to get a department car.

The drive up to the West Side went quite quickly despite the traffic; her thoughts, though she knew she should have been preparing to speak the potential victim, were completely on Eli and his reluctance to leave her that morning.

While one part of her wanted to brush away the incident as Eli just suffering some mild anxiety about being separated from someone who had spent every waking moment of the past two days with him, Olivia's other side, the maternal side that had been heightened to ten times its normal ferocity since Eli had been left in her care, worried that there was more to Eli's tears about daycare.

During the two hours that followed her arrival at David Matterson's office, Olivia had approached David Matterson about his son's alleged abuse, been screamed at through the suggestion of taking Tristan to a doctor to be examined, been yelled at by Katrina Matterson over the idea that she would allow someone to hurt her child while under her care, and had backtracked to David's office to talk to Tristan alone.

Tristan was buoyant in his chair as Olivia tried to talk to him, bouncing in his seat like a normal child with too much energy.

"Tristan," Olivia said. "Why did you run away from daycare?"

"I didn't runaway," he said, still bouncing in his seat.

"But, you came all the way here to your dad's office."

"I went for a walk."

"All by yourself?"

"I did it before. It's not hard."

"Tristan…why do you go for walks? Is somebody hurting you at daycare?"

Tristan shook his head. "No. School is boring. I like to walk in the park like we did when we all lived together, but Daddy doesn't live with us no more…so we don't get to take walks."

Olivia spoke to Tristan for another thirty minutes, but was unable to find anything out of the ordinary outside the fact that the little boy was not taking his parents divorce very well. After some hard persuading, she accompanied Tristan and both parents to the hospital where he was examined by a doctor, who later told Olivia that she saw no signs of abuse.

Once she had stressed to both parents the importance of helping Tristan understand what was happening to their marriage, Olivia drove back to the precinct thinking that as much as loved having Eli with her, if she ever got Michelle at ACS to see her point of view and she adopted a child, she would want to start with a little boy about Tristan's age instead. It was not that she did not like babies, but for as long as she played with the idea of adoption, she had always imagined she would do much better as a mother with an older child.

By noon, she had finalized her report on Tristan Matterson and was about to delve into her other open cases, when she perused her e-mails and saw a message from Grayleck about Legal Aid being backed up and unable to assign anyone to Ian Byroms yet, let alone prepare him to be arraigned. As much as she wanted to let the proverbial sleeping dogs lie, her nerve got the better of her and she headed for the cage.

Olivia walked towards the bars and glared at his forlorn and sulking form. They stared at one another for a few minutes before Byroms shook his head.

"What more do you want from me? I've already given you everything you want."

"I remember you," she said. "I know you don't remember me because it was so long ago, but I definitely remember you."

"I don't know what you're talking about. When's that other chick gonna get here. I thought was going through that…'rainment or whatever it is."

"Courtney Rauscher…Does that name ring a bell?"

Byroms shivered and his eyes dropped towards the floor.

"She was the first person you assaulted," Olivia continued. "You were just twelve years old and you were already attacking girls."

"I didn't mean for it to happen. Back then we were…we were just kids. Just playing around."

"And, that's what you'd said, but somehow all these years later…all that playing around sounds like a whole lot of bullshit, doesn't it?"

Byroms only shrugged.

"Did you know they've dropped the statute of limitations on rape in New York?" Byroms' eyebrows shot towards his forehead. "Oh yeah. And, I'm pretty sure…in fact, I'm almost certain if I called Courtney Raucsher tonight, she'd be more than prepared to account for what you really did to her ten years ago, too."

Olivia began to walk away, but Byroms finally shifted from his stoic pose.

"You…you can't," he said.

"Why's that?" Byroms went silent again and Olivia took a step closer to cage. "If you think I'm bluffing about bringing up ten-year-old charges on you, you're losing it."

"If I…," Byroms began, "if I tell you what happened, will you promise not to ask for life?"

"Why would I do that?"

"Because I just want to set things right. She deserves that much."

Olivia stared at him for a moment before pulling a set of keys out of her back pocket and ushering Byroms out of the cell. She brought him into an open interrogation room and glared at him as she paced in front of the small table in the grey room.

"So…what is it? Why can't I talk to Courtney Rauscher?"

"I'm not really sure how it happened."

"Tell me anyway."

Byroms sighed a rubbed a hand across his face. "This night about a year ago…I was on campus just walking home minding my business and she walks outta this store and she starts pointing at me and yelling. She just kept saying that I ruined her life and she shouldn't have changed her story. I tried to get away from her, but she just kept following me everywhere I'd go. So, then I went down this alley and I grabbed her and told her that I didn't mean what happened back then, but then she just started screaming and screaming and-and-and…I just didn't know how else to shut her up."

"What happened?"

Byroms shrugged. "I don't know, but she's…she's…she didn't make it."

"She didn't make it," Olivia repeated. "Normally when people don't _make_ it, they were in a car crash or had a heart attack. _You_ killed her."

"My hand just…on her throat, but really I didn't mean to."

"Just like with all those other girls? You never mean to do anything, do you?" Byroms' sat stoic and Olivia shook her head. "Where is she?"

"There's a shed at my uncle's house in Poughkeepsie…I buried her under there."

Olivia paced in front of the table for a full minute with her arms crossed, attempting to avoid "Pulling a Stabler" on the young man who sat at the table. After another minute of silence, she sat back down at the table with her hands clenched.

"I'm not promising you anything, but I'll notify the DA. Maybe she'll show you some leniency once we find her…though I know _I_ wouldn't."

"I just want to set things right."

Olivia shut her eyes for a moment and began to leave the room, but Byroms gently grabbed her forearm. She glared at him and he sighed.

"I never wanted my life to be like this. I swear…this isn't what I wanted out of life."

Her scowl never wavered and she snatched her arm away from him quickly. She then stepped into the corridor and nearly ran into Cragen as she tried to regain her composure.

"You took out Byroms again?" he said. "What happened with the Matterson boy?"

Olivia rubbed a hand across her forehead. "I spoke with Tristan and I think he's just taking his parents' divorce a little harder. Byroms, however, is a different story altogether."

"What d'you mean?"

"He just confessed to a murder from a year ago."

Cragen hung his head. "It happened in the city?"

"Yeah, but he dragged her to his uncle's house in Poughkeepsieso he could bury her under the shed."

"Aw, Christ."

"It gets worse."

"Why? Who was it?"

"Courtney Rauscher. She was the first girl who reported that he assaulted her. She recanted and I've never been so sorry to hear about a victim recanting."

"You're right. This just keeps getting worse and worse."

"I suppose the upside is that Grayleck doesn't have to worry about the amount of time he's been in the cage anymore since now we've got to do some fact-checking into his story."

Olivia brought Byroms back to the cage and, after only two searches, was able to find the Missing Persons report on Courtney Rauscher. It dated back over a year with the claim that Courtney was just going to the store and back to her apartment when she disappeared off the street. Her family, her friends and her roommates were all interviewed multiple times, but no one had any news of what could have happened to her. The only lead at the time was that she and her boyfriend were having some problems, but once that trail ended cold, the case was set aside as unsolved.

With Byroms' story corroborated by the Missing Persons report, Olivia called Grayleck, took a statement from Byroms and made the two-hour trip to Poughkeepsie with Fin.

The local police department was already at the home of Paul and Edna Byroms by the time Olivia and Fin arrived and, from the direction given by Byroms himself, an excavation team had descended on the small shed that sat towards the end of the large the lot and the area around it.

The dig was already underway by the time Olivia and Fin had found their way through a maze of mixed overgrowth and harried pruning to the shed and it took close to three hours of assisting the local crime scene investigators pull up boards and organize the site before a cry of "We got something over here!" echoed across the yard.

Olivia and Fin hurried to the edge of the vast yard where officers had surrounded a portion of the yard where a second dig had begun. The recently dug earth was well away from the standing shed, but there was no mistaking the grey bones sticking out of the ground; Byroms was not aware that his uncle had moved the makeshift shed closer to the house four months earlier.

"Oh my God," Mrs. Byroms whispered with a hand over her mouth. Her husband stood beside her, shaking his head as they both surveyed the scene.

"Mr. And Mrs. Byroms," Olivia said as she hovered near the site, "please stand back."

"We had no idea he did this!" Mrs. Byroms shrieked. "I swear on Christ _Jesus_ we didn't know what he'd done."

Olivia sighed as the team prepared to continue lifting the remains from the ground and, bringing about an old defense mechanism, she let her thoughts drift as she let the horrific scene play before her.

_God, I'll be up to my ass in paperwork for the rest of the week on this one…should go quick since Melinda's pretty good about calling us…Crap! Not Melinda…it'll be a local examiner…there's no way he'll be as good…I wonder if we could manage to get Melinda up here to do the autopsy instead…autopsy…autopsy…Collins case…Grayleck said something about discussing the autopsy again with Melinda, Collins…Collins wasn't that what that woman said in the park…Collins…Colin…Uncle Colin…I should've done more with that woman…too bad I had Eli with me or I –_

"Oh Christ," she whispered as her heart jumped in her throat. It was 5:58 and she was at least two hours and a toll bridge away from Manhattan.

She turned to find Fin. "Fin. Fin! I gotta get back to the city. If I don't pick up Eli on time, I'm gonna be in big trouble with Elliot."

"You're good, Liv," Fin said. "I never seen Stabler _run_ outta the precinct to get his own kid."

"Yeah, well," she said walking towards the street. "This is different. If he's late, he just sleeps on the couch. If I'm late, they'll both gang up on me and leave me with broken fingers and a concussion. You mind if I take the car?"

Fin nodded at her. "S'ok. I like the train."

"Thanks. Let me know if you dig up anything else…no pun intended."

Olivia was speeding towards the city within minutes and voice dialed Cragen as she hit Route 55 going eight-nine miles an hour.

"Liv," Cragen's voice rang from the phone in the dashboard cradle. "What have you got for me?"

"We think we found her. She was a ways from the shed Byroms mentioned, but that was because his uncle had moved the shed a few months ago."

"I assume I'll have a 61 signed by you and Fin by the end of the week?" Cragen asked.

"Probably earlier if we can get their ME's office to cooperate, but Cap, I had to leave. Fin's holding down the fort right now and he'll be in contact if anything else develops."

"What's going on?"

"I've gotta to get Eli. If I'm late to pick him up from daycare, Elliot will have my head."

She heard Cragen snicker. "I'm just glad Byroms was as forthcoming as he was so we could put Courtney Rauscher to rest."

"Yeah, I just wish we had been able to prosecute when he was still young. Maybe we wouldn't have anyone to put to rest at all…"

Olivia drove for another hour on cruise control until she hit the vast traffic going into the city, shaking her head and sighing the entire time.

_My first night trying to get him and I'm going to be late. How am I ever going to manage this?_

She slowly approached the soul-wrenching gridlock at the toll plaza for the George Washington Bridge and, as she thought about simply ditching the car on the bridge and running the rest of the way to the Upper West Side, the name "Maureen Stabler" appeared on her cell phone display.

"Maureen?" Olivia answered.

"Olivia. Yeah, it's me. My mom called me a half hour ago and asked me to pick up Eli. I just now realized I hadn't called you yet."

Olivia suddenly felt very queasy as she relaxed her clenched hands on the steering wheel. "Oh?"

"Yeah, she said she tried you at the precinct, but there was something going on about Poughkeepsie, so she called me and asked to pick him up. I'm really sorry. I should've called you earlier."

"Yeah, I'm still about a half-hour away with the traffic. Maureen, I'm so sorry I inconvenienced you like this."

"No, don't even worry about it. Half the time I get a call from Dad at five minutes 'til seven begging me to get up there because he's out in the field with you. Besides, I hardly get to spend any time with Eli nowadays and it's a nice break from studying."

Olivia thanked Maureen, feeling glumly nauseated that Kathy had known Olivia would not have been able to pick Eli on time and turned her radio to a classical station as she tried to let her heart rate slow as she drove in the traffic that grew worse and worse the farther she drove into the city.

She stopped by the precinct to grab some of the files she knew would need to be updated that evening and then arrived at Maureen's apartment by a quarter past eight.

"Hey," Maureen said brightly as she opened the door. Olivia heard loud banging in the apartment. "I'm really sorry, but he seemed kinda tired when I got him, so I put him down for a nap and sorta just let him sleep until now…"

The banging paused for a moment as Eli's shriek echoed through the apartment and started again a minute later.

"Yeah…," Maureen said. "He's up now and he's probably gonna be wired for a while."

Olivia sighed, but smiled. "It's okay. I've got a long night ahead of me and he can keep me up better than a double espresso."

She took the car seat that continuously traveled back and forth between Maureen and her parents, took Eli in her other arm and within minutes was walking towards her apartment after the quick drive several blocks to her street.

She struggled to carry Eli and her files from her parking space two blocks away from her building and sighed as she opened her mailbox and piece after piece of coloured paper fell out of the narrow box: offers for siding for her home, GOP invitations, breast cancer awareness walks, pizza coupons, concert flyers, running group flyers, DNC invitations, flyers for the new artists' gallery hop, a Saks bill for the shoes she didn't know where or when she was going to wear, but had looked so good on her that she just couldn't leave them in the store…

Letting Eli hold her mail as he toddled in the corridor, Olivia pressed the button for the elevator and felt more drained than she had since the day she first took him. The elevator doors opened a moment later and she had to beckon Eli to step into the lift for a full minute, half wondering if she would have to chase after him if he got too excited and started to run.

As her mind went through the mounting items that remained her on list before she could even imagine a shower and sleep, she almost winced when she realized she still had to make sure Eli got something to eat, got his bath and was put to bed at a decent hour.

She leaned against into the corner of the elevator momentarily regretting her volunteerism and nodded to herself as she agreed with Michelle's previous soft, but poignant words.

The elevator slowly creaked past the sixth floor and Eli flapped her junk mail in the air, simultaneously enjoying the air current shifts and the gravitational pull on his little legs. As she continued to watch him happily waving and laughing to himself, the weight of all that she still had to do seemed to melt and Olivia could not help but return Eli's smile when he stared up at her.

Once in the apartment, she left the Saks bill on the table and tossed the remainder in the garbage as she ran to catch up with Eli who had made a beeline for her sofa.

Knowing that she was too exhausted to feed Eli and clean her entire kitchen that night, she pulled out more paper and large crayons and fed Eli small bites of spaghetti over the course of an hour as he coloured over every surface available. He was still full of energy by nine o'clock, but it was not until she was giving him a bath that Olivia's sense of fatigue faded.

He looked so happy splashing and trying to catch the smiling yellow duck that floated in the water that the aches in her back and in her knees did not matter and no amount of paperwork could keep her from laughing when Eli finally caught his Rubber Ducky.

_You know, I could do this_, she thought as she carefully poured water over his head. _I think I could do this by myself._

She would need to find childcare that used a little common sense after seven o'clock, but there was a chance that she could do it on her own. Even if it was just a little "whoops" with a man who was attractive and intelligent, she could do it.

My own mother did it…and I'm not even a drunk…

Olivia dried off Eli and put him into his sleepers, but he was still a bundle of energy. Each time she tried to put him down to sleep, he would jump back up again and rattle the sides of his playpen.

"Oh, you're _gonna_ go to bed," she said as he stood up laughing after the third time. "Aunt Liv is really, really tired and Little Eli has to go to sleep so that Aunt Liv can function at the precinct tomorrow."

She picked him up when it was apparent that he was not going to go to sleep in his state and tossed him in the air a few times before tickling him and chasing him across the apartment until it looked like he was finally beginning to tire. She then sang him the only lullaby she could remember as she rubbed his back and his eyes finally began to close.

She had just laid out all the documents she needed to begin her casework when the phone rang.

"Benson."

"Liv? It's Elliot."

"Elliot, I'm so sorry I couldn't get to the daycare center on time."

"Don't worry about it, Liv. We had a back up plan. How's my boy?"

"Doing just fine, I just put him to bed though."

"I figured. We keep forgetting what the time difference is. At least I do."

"Still having a good time?"

"Absolutely. We're going on this ATV thing a little later. We may not get back to the hotel until tomorrow."

"That's sounds fun."

"Yeah. I think I'm gonna be grumpy when I get back. I'm getting used to all this sunshine."

"As long you're making the best of the trip."

"Oh, we are. Just outta curiosity though…what was going on today? Anything I should know about?"

"No, not really. You're on vacation."

"You're right, I'm on vacation, but I also know when you're lying to me. Is there something going on with one of our open cases?"

Olivia sighed. "Yeah. It occurred to me today that this wasn't the first time we've had Byroms at the house."

"When was the first time?"

"About ten years ago. He'd been accused of assaulting one of his classmates, but then she recanted. You remember her name? Courtney Rauscher."

"Doesn't ring a bell."

"Well, I threatened Byroms with the fact that there's no more statute of limitations on rape and then he spilled that he'd already…_resolved_ issues with Rauscher."

"Resolved?" Elliot went silent for a few moments. "How bad is it?"

"That's why Fin and I were in Poughkeepsie. We'd just found her body when I had to leave."

"Oh Jesus."

"He'd lead us straight to her, though. At least, he didn't let her stay there for someone else to find fifty years from now…"

Olivia spoke with Elliot for another twenty minutes before pausing to check on Eli and the making a large cup of coffee. Munching on several chocolate-covered coffee beans as she worked, she completed the first ten pages of the necessary paperwork to document what had led up to the discovery of Courtney Rauscher's remains and finally fell into her bed a few minutes after two o'clock in the morning.


End file.
